Sometimes your life flips on its head in a matter of days.

I had one of those moments recently.

My audience on social media quadrupled in size from 60k to 250k before I could even process what had happened. It took me 9 months to go from 0 → 60k and all of 3 days to 4x it.

This is the power of nonlinear work.

If you want to gain passive wealth— the kind of money that works for you while you explore the French Riviera via moped— then you must have ownership in something. Chances are slim that you generate wealth working for someone else.

In order to have ownership, you must cultivate skill. This is an inherently nonlinear pursuit; you’ll earn next to nothing for months— even years— until eventually, everything happens at once. The views. The followers. The income.

Your penniless months are essential. This is where you relentlessly run the loop of analyzing → iterating → doubling down. After enough cycles, you start to realize instinctively what works and what doesn’t; this is a very powerful feeling— I call it taste.

“We live in an age of infinite leverage, and the economic rewards for genuine intellectual curiosity have never been higher.”

- Naval Ravikant

What should you pursue?

In the modern economy, following your passions will often yield higher return than renting your time to an employer. We are at an extremely unique point in history where specific knowledge + passion gives a massive amount of leverage.

This is because you have the tools necessary to multiply your output exponentially. Think about it— in the 1980s if you were passionate about tennis, you could pursue 1:1 or class coaching. That’s about it. In-person coaching contains minimal leverage because your inputs are always tied to your outputs; you cannot earn passively.

In 2026 if you’re interested in tennis, your options are endless:

A) Post short-form content on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube shorts providing tennis tips, gameplay clips, and other pieces of advice.

B) Create long-form videos on YouTube providing more in-depth tutorials and analysis.

C) Write articles on Substack or create a newsletter providing tennis insights and your unique angle on the game / the psychology behind playing tennis (and how it applies to life).

D) Use AI tooling to create an app or website that helps people track their tennis progress and gain individualized feedback.

…and there are endless more options.

So where does your unique set of knowledge lie? Follow your interests.

You’re likely already in the top 5% most knowledgeable people in some topic. You just need to identify it. What doesn’t feel like work? What makes you excited and energized? What could you yap about in painstaking detail for hours?

Follow that.

You have a built-in competitive advantage in that field: Knowledge and passion. Not only do you know more than most, but you’re willing to outwork most because it feels like play to you.

How should you pursue it?

The past year, I worked as a financial analyst for a Fortune 500 company. It bored me to tears— but I’m beyond grateful I did it.

I spent every hour outside of work filming, editing, and posting content to grow my personal brand. If I had to suggest the best way to pursue your monetizable passion, it’s to do it on the side.

DO NOT quit your job until your side income replaces your full time income, or you have a clear path to replacement in the near future.

Keeping your full time job does a few essential things:

• It reduces pressure on your passion. Without any pressure to earn, you are free to explore the full spectrum of your interests. Ironically, being in this creative flow state often leads you to earn more.

• It motivates you to keep building. Once you get a taste of what life could look like if you quit the job and pursued your passion full time, it lights a fire under you to grind harder than ever before.

Society rewards individuals for providing something that it doesn’t know how to get elsewhere. The “something” is constantly in flux. Most hear that and think that it’s pointless to start. Others are thrilled by the opportunity of chasing it.

If you’re waiting to build a presence online, the perfect time will always be a month ahead of you. I know that because I’ve been there before. Build a brand by giving away free value to others, and take risk in the process.

Ownership and leverage isn’t reserved for elites. Anyone can obtain it if they’re willing to go looking.

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I just couldn’t get over how quiet it was. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead as a chorus of keyboard clicks clattered around me. Stale, sterile air lingered— indifferent to the hopes and dreams of the hundreds that sucked it in.

Humans know when their work is trivial and lacks purpose— at least I did. I felt it in my stomach in the stop-and-go traffic of Tuesday mornings. It’s the guilty feeling when you tell a lie; the anxious pit that forms from betraying someone’s trust, only that someone was me.

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“People are strange: They are constantly angered by trivial things, but on a major matter like totally wasting their lives, they hardly seem to notice.”

- Charles Bukowski

Gen Z is in a uniquely strange predicament: Our lives are stuffed full of triviality.

We may go down as the generation of time wasting— we are just suckers for irrelevant, useless information. 9-5 is for corporate fluff, and 5-9 is to unwind before the cycle repeats the next morning.

As a generation, we average nine hours of screen time a day. Nine.

I could sit here and blather on about how much of a waste of time that is… “You could use that time to be reading, learning… building the next Amazon!” Blah blah blah. We all know that— and it still doesn’t stop us.

My larger concern is the effect it has on our ability to create long-term goals.

The default mode network (DMN) is the area of the brain responsible for self-reflection and long-term planning. It’s essential for crafting your own identity and sense of self.

This region can only be activated when a person is not focused on the outside world. In other words, anytime you are fixated on external stimulus, the DMN is turned off.

The scary thing is, without the DMN, your life is basically on autopilot. You are a corpse going through the motions of human life without ever stopping to consider whether it’s your own.

Time spent in boredom literally makes up who you are. It dictates your goals, ambitions, and your mental construction of what kind of person you are.

You don’t lack drive or ambition, your habits just keep you in a short-sighted loop. It’s like trying to climb a mountain while only looking at your feet— it may feel productive because you’re moving, but how on earth do you know you’re going the right way?

“If you don’t have your own goals, you’ll be doomed to work toward someone else’s.”

- Harry Truman

Unfortunately, most of Gen Z is stuck in autopilot mode. The majority pursue fields they chose when they were 19, and turn to external noise to drown out the signal telling them they picked the wrong path.

Now for the good part: There is hope. Not just a little hope— unlimited, untapped pure joy waiting on the other side.

During my one year stint in corporate America, I worked tirelessly after each day to build an audience that would allow me to quit. Many flopped videos, self-doubts, and long nights later, I finally cultivated a following of 60,000 that allowed me to do so.

24 hours after my last day, my audience suddenly quadrupled to over 250,000. Call it hard work, great timing, or straight up dumb luck— but the principle holds true: Good habits produce compounding results.

In a world where most are perpetually distracted on things that don’t matter, set aside time each day to find signal through the noise. Cut out the text messages, tiktoks, and podcasts. What you’ll start to find is that you do care about things. You actually care a lot. You just didn’t know what to care about before.

And once you actually start working on things that matter to you, you’ll realize the competition is laughably slim. I truly believe our algorithmic echo chambers lead us to think that everything is “saturated” or “overdone”. In reality, if you could see the actual percentages of people pursuing those things, it would be shockingly low.

Your biggest advantage over the next decade isn’t going to be Claude fluency or AI side hustles.

It will be the courage to relentlessly reject triviality in pursuit of what energizes you.

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My college major did something weird to me; it convinced me I was somebody I wasn’t. You see, my decision to become a finance major didn’t required much other than a hungover thought and a form submission.

Business sounds cool —> everyone I know is doing finance —> I don’t want to stray from the pack

Why did everyone pick finance? It was most practical.

Practical. One of the most poisonous words you can teach an eighteen year-old kid trying to make sense of the world.

Definitionally, it commands you to throw away your hopes, dreams, and passions in favor of what has provided stability for the most amount of people. And when you start to optimize your life for what has worked for the majority, you slowly betray your own individuality.

The same way close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, practicality should be reserved for ladders and lifeboats.

The finance identity, however, wasn’t fully cemented until I started looking for internships.

Numerous psychological studies have proven that the brain starts to believe what we repeatedly tell it. Whether it’s written or verbal, the information we convey on a regular basis slowly forms our subconscious identity. This, in turn, becomes a ubiquitous layer that steeps the context of our thoughts.

With that in mind, let me paint you an image: 2 mock interview sessions a week, a dozen interviews, countless hours of prep… all training me to attach my identity to finance. Why are you passionate about finance? Why’d you pick finance? What are your long-term goals in finance?

Question after question forcing me to come up with elaborate answers that displayed my infinite affection for “analytical problem solving” and “turning unstructured data into actionable insights”.

Even though I knew each answer didn’t align with who I truly was, it didn’t matter— my subconscious had made up its mind.

That was me 2 years ago. Stuck. Wanting to build a rich, interesting life for myself, but unable to escape the gravitational field of finance.

Flash forward to today:

I’m sitting at my dark wooden desk with only the essentials: a notepad, iced americano, and macbook. With no need to rush, I take a deep, relaxed breath. Sunbeams pour in my window while birds softly chirp in the swaying trees. My noise canceling headphones block the outside world as I furiously type away— more energized and focused than ever before to build something meaningful for myself.

No boss, no pointless meetings and pings to find ways to save money for faceless shareholders across the globe.

“Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking.”

- Steve Jobs

But this life didn’t come out of nowhere. It was the result of a series of calculated investments and risks over a prolonged period of time— consistent actions that washed away my inclination for practicality and replaced it with a burning passion for dreams of my own.

It started with my 5-9. Every moment outside of work was spent toward my personal brand— best decision I ever made. I became obsessed with providing value to my viewers. That was the investment.

I started from zero followers a year ago and built it to 220k+ across platforms.

I had no followers, no audience, no voice. But what I’ve learned is that social media algorithms are the most meritocratic system on earth. In other words, if you make good content that people like, you will achieve your wildest dreams.

That is a fact.

Algorithms put little weight on follower count— virality is almost entirely decided by retention and engagement rates (which have nothing to do with audience size).

It’s why content is the most effective way to change your life. In very few other industries can you create high quality output and be guaranteed results; there are just too many variables. Take music, for example. Hundreds of thousands of insanely talented musicians will never break 1,000 monthly listeners. Output quality ≠ results in this instance.

Ok, so how do you start? I wish there was a secret, but there isn’t. It’s like a rat sitting at the beginning of a maze thinking to itself “I really want to start but I don’t know where the cheese is!” That’s the point. The cheese is found through navigating the maze. So too is your passion.

Then how do you know when to go all in? In poker there’s a term called pot odds. It refers to the ratio of what you’d be putting in the middle versus what you could potentially win. What separates amateurs from professionals is which part of the formula they focus on: amateurs stress about giving up their stack, whereas professionals give it up willingly if the math predicts a positive return.

To put it bluntly, often the cost is only scary because you’re not looking at the potential return. When you start to look around, what you’ll see is that most people take the practical route and horde their chips. Why do anything else and risk losing your stack?

Those same individuals slowly dwindle from paying the buy-in every round; what seemed practical leaves them without leverage or money over time. Meanwhile, the few who understand calculated risk cash out with towers of chips.

“Love the hand that fate deals you and play it as your own.”

- Marcus Aurelius

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On the race track of life, there are no speed limits. Most of us unknowingly choose to drive a rusted mini van, cautiously checking our mirrors when we turn as if we’re dropping off the kids at soccer practice.

Then there are the few that are willing to scrap the van for parts and rebuild it into a formula one race car. These individuals run circles around us suburban soccer moms despite being handed the same frame. So how do they do it?

Put simply, they understand something the mini van-ers never will: You can modify anything about your car at will. Switch out the engine, tint the windows… you could have blue flames shooting out the back if you really wanted.

Your brain is extremely malleable and is constantly reforming itself around your thoughts and actions. The question becomes— what are the optimal tweaks required to produce meaningful and productive performance?

1. Body of the car

The frame of your car is everything. This pertains to the systems and structures you create for your life on both a micro and macro level. What is your time management strategy? How do you eliminate useless busy work? What kinds of activities do you prioritize? When do you wake up? How is your environment structured to minimize distraction?

There’s a reason formula 1 cars are a fraction of the size of mini vans: Subtraction is everything. You must be willing to eliminate friction; everything else will follow.

For clarity, friction refers to any aspect of your life that makes it harder to complete a desired task or work toward an important outcome. There’s always some friction you can’t work around— your 9-5 job, eating times, time with loved ones (a case of beneficial and necessary friction).

But as you start to dissect your day, you’ll find a laughable amount of friction that can be dropped without any negative consequences. To start carving down your frame, assess where digital and physical friction play a role in your daily schedule.

Screen time is the easiest culprit. I used to have a habit of reaching for my phone whenever I was bored; it killed my desire to work meaningfully toward my goals. Why put in the strenuous effort to think when I can just receive cheap dopamine from my phone? Not good.

This fix is extremely simple: Leave your phone in a different room. Don’t touch it. Don’t make compromises with yourself. Set a block of time (I like 90 minutes) where you’re working uninterrupted and without distraction. The boredom will be uncomfortable at first, but you’ll make more progress than you can imagine.

“Take breaks from focus, not breaks from distraction”

- Confucius probably, idk

So many of us have the wrong relationship with work. The work is the main event. It’s not some chalky pill you choke down so that you can get right back to your diet of useless digital information. Change the dynamic by changing your time blocks. 90 minutes focused work, 20 minute break.

Physical friction is also an extremely underrated killer of productivity. Your environment must be conducive to work. Right now, I’m writing from my desk in my room; on the table is a black coffee, a note pad, and a mac with one tab open. My headphones are set to noise canceling mode, and there is not a single external source of noise. I have no option but to work.

Assess where digital and physical friction plays a role in your life, and cut it out ruthlessly; you’ll be flying down straight aways faster than you could imagine.

2. The engine

A car’s frame/body is very important— don’t get me wrong. But it’s useless without something to propel it down the road. That something is an engine; gears and pistons working relentlessly together to generate motion.

This is your passion and mission. What are you working toward? Why? What happens when you run out of motivation? When your systems inevitably break?

Engines don’t run on motivation. They run on mechanical discipline. So does our engine— it operates on the kind of discipline that is only cultivated through knowing that you are building a life you are excited about.

I truly don’t believe people inherently lack discipline. They just lack something worth having discipline for. Having children is a prime example; ask someone to endure thousands of sleepless nights, diaper changes, and projectile pukes, and they’d call you crazy. Give them a kid and they do it willingly.

You need to find that thing worth working toward.

“But I don’t know how to find it!”

Clarity is found through action. Create content, write essays, join a pottery class, start playing the guitar, learn psychology. There are infinite cool things in the world. Just pick something and iterate based off that.

3. The driver

This is you. Your psyche and mental health. It is the most vital piece of all of this. Every part of the vehicle could be optimized ruthlessly, but if you’re not driving to the best of your ability, what’s the point?

Take care of the driver. Go on long walks, call your friends, meditate, spend time in nature. Be forgiving of yourself. Remember that all you can control are the inputs you create. You cannot direct the outputs you receive.

“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control”

- Epictetus

I’ve heard a lot of billionaire tech bros say recently that introspection is useless and not worth your time. Personally, I couldn’t disagree more. The ability to step back and spend time reflecting on your thoughts and actions (and how they dictate your life) is an extremely useful and necessary practice.

I am a big fan of transcendental meditation. It is basically the practice of trying to dive to the layer beneath your conscious monkey-mind thoughts and view thoughts objectively as they arise, not tethered to the lens of your ego. David Lynch has some great content expanding on the pure, untapped “consciousness” you’ll find when you go beyond the thoughts that control you.

Thank you for reading!

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The streets of Florence were dark, but far from quiet.

“You think he’s always like this?” I asked my best friend, Peter, as we walked through the humid night to the next bar.

“I hope not” he replied with a quick laugh.

We were talking about John, of course— a mutual who was inventing new ways of embarrassing us every minute. Calling out to strangers, arm wrestling bartenders, and hollering so loud that we were— by default— the focal point of any pub.

I laughed to myself as the cobblestone corridors were desecrated by echoing calls from a young American— the Romans are probably rolling in their graves.

Despite how mortified I was… something extremely strange happened.

We had the best night ever.

The arm wrestling with bartenders? Gave us free drinks all night.

Harassing of strangers? Provided us with new friends.

Drawing attention to our group? Attracted the most fun people in any room.

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Suddenly it clicked. John had mastered something I spent my whole life avoiding like the plague: embarrassment. Being comfortable with embarrassment is a life-changing superpower that will attract unlimited opportunity. It’s one of the few tools we have that requires no investment but can yield infinite return.

While I don’t expect you to start challenging every bartender you see to an arm wrestling match, there are some practical ways you can use embarrassment to your advantage in everyday life:

1. Create content

Doesn’t have to be short form. Doesn’t have to use trending audios. Just has to be authentic to you. That can be extremely embarrassing at first— I know it was for me. But the harsh truth is that if you’re embarrassed to display your identity to friends, family, and strangers, then your identity is either not clearly defined, or not highly esteemed.

Defining your identity isn’t easy, but it is simple. Say you’re trying to get into track and field but you don’t know what event to pick; I can tell you for a fact it will do you no good sitting back and deliberating whether your long legs would be better spent on high jump or the 800 meter. The answer is, of course, to try everything out and see what you like. Clarity stems from action. ALWAYS.

“Have no fear of perfection— you’ll never reach it.”

- Salvador Dalí

As for crafting confidence, I love Hormozi’s definition: “You don’t become confident by shouting affirmations in the mirror, but by having a stack of undeniable proof that you are who you say you are.”

Just show up. If you don’t have confidence, swagger, or esteem in your identity, that’s okay. I didn’t either. I’m not just going to tell you to start believing in yourself; it doesn’t work. Instead, build up a pile of evidence that is indisputably in line with who you want to be. You’ll have no choice but to believe in it— and it only requires time and consistency (both of which are at your disposal today).

“But why do I have to post publicly?”

I suppose you don’t have to— the same way if someone hands you a free lottery ticket everyday you have the option to throw it away. But why would you? The paper is in your hands. It costs nothing to hold onto it and see what happens. Who knows, it could change your life; it changed mine.

2. Talk to strangers

This is such an effective way to increase your surface area for luck. Crazy concept: People are cool and have a lot to offer. You’re not Batman. Go socialize. Smile at strangers, compliment hats, be approachable in your body language. Life has a funny way of rewarding that kind of thing.

Every week I try to connect with 3 strangers… and every week part of me dreads these calls.

The thoughts come rolling in right on schedule: “Why did I do this? It’s taking away from my free time! I’d way rather just be relaxing right now.”

But every single time, I’m glad I did it. Some of my best ideas have come from 30 minute conversations with people I didn’t know.

3. Practice public speaking

People’s two biggest fears are death and public speaking blah blah blah

I think if anyone gave a speech once a day for 365 days in front of an audience, they would no longer be afraid of public speaking. What I’m getting at is I don’t believe for a second that the fear of public speaking is an irreversible trait that you were born with and doomed to carry until you die.

I simply think it’s a matter of unfamiliarity. You fear it because you don’t understand it. Same with death. And I doubt you’ll be afraid of that either after you experience it.

There are countless other ways to face embarrassment head on, so have fun with it! Remember: It costs you nothing, but can yield more than you can imagine.

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Well, my content income has officially surpassed my full time income. This extra chunk of change I earn each month would cost me another 5-10 years to accumulate in the corporate world– so how did I do it?

When I pivoted my account to a personal brand, I had 400 followers and not a single ounce of videography experience. Even CapCut’s interface looked like the cockpit of a Boeing 737 to my brain

…but the truth is, it didn’t matter for me and it certainly won’t for you.

8 months later I have over 50,000 followers and more confidence than ever before.

If I had to start again, I would only keep two things in mind: Speed and direction. Everything else is meaningless noise.

Every year, salmon fight their way upstream through rapids and waterfalls to mate at serene spawning grounds.

In the salmon world, there is no such thing as a “theorist”. The smartest will die exactly like the dumbest if they don’t swim.

In other words, knowing precisely where the calm water lies means nothing if you don’t take action to get there.

In nature and in business, the universe rewards agency.

And agency, like anything else, is a habit that can be cultivated over time. I started with one hour a day after work.

Just one hour on a task that makes the rest of the day a win if you complete it; for me it was creating a piece of content.

Over time your brain is conditioned to crave and protect that hour. This is the foundation of mastery.

Next is the direction that your speed is aimed at. Speed is simple, but direction is nuanced.

I find it largely unhelpful to sit and consider the possible directions you can pursue.

Instead, I tended to create with a distinct mantra in mind when I was starting out.

I attribute most of my success to this phrase: Realize that nobody cares about you.

Harsh, I know. But the sooner you get over yourself, the sooner you’ll be able to build. There are a couple of key interpretations of this truth that fuel my content philosophy to this day:

Self-assured playfulness

• “Nobody cares about me, so I have the freedom to express my opinions freely and build the life I want for myself”

Practical humility

• “Nobody cares about me, so in order to capture peoples’ attention, I need to provide some sort of value to them”

Understand these pillars and you’ll attract followers. Add consistency and iteration and you’ll build an audience.

That’s all there is.

“You wouldn’t worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.”

- Eleanor Roosevelt

And I truly believe this is the most practical framework to approach content with as a beginner because it helped me check off the two most common cop-outs: Not knowing what to talk about, and caring about what others think.

“Ok…… but I still don’t know what kind of videos to make!”

Dude. Are you a Sims character?

What do you talk about with your friends? What have you accomplished that you’re proud of? How do you spend your free time?

Everybody has a unique perspective; if you sat down for 10 minutes considering what makes you energized, you’d have countless content ideas.

“But I don’t have enough real world experience to have an interesting perspective!”

That’s the beauty of it. You can speak on things that don’t exist yet: Your goals, ambitions, dreams, hopes, the person you’re becoming, the life you’re building, the future you’re claiming. All of it makes you more human. All of it makes you more resonant.

"First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do."

- Epictetus

The reality is, even the world’s best content expert can’t tell you what to talk about— the answer is found within. And I’m not saying you need to go on a 6 month psychedelic retreat or “find yourself” in Bali.

What I mean by that is with each action you take, you uncover another piece of the puzzle. With each new post, you are gathering new data, and climbing slowly toward the place you were naturally meant to be. Agency is the answer, and complete clarity is the destination.

The bar has never been lower.

Are you willing to learn how to limbo?

(if you made it this far, that corny outro is my gift to you)

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